


Hometown Hero

by jenni3penny



Series: McAvoys 1.0 [9]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-01 04:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13990014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: A long weekend getaway to New York and some alone time. The first chapter is tame(r). Second chapter will Smut™. Third will likely just be fluffy.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mettespo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mettespo/gifts).



The play hadn't been terrible but it hadn't been the most inspired musical revival to grace a Broadway stage either. It'd been entertaining though and, thankfully, it'd held Mac's attention throughout. In fact she seemed like she'd enjoyed it even more than he had, still a little wonderstruck afterwards. He had enjoyed it, sure, but _she_ had been enthralled.

He'd actually just enjoyed being beside her more than anything else - holding her hand, letting her rest onto his shoulder, putting an arm around her as they had watched and feeling her lean warmly into him. He'd liked that she'd near preened as he'd run his fingertips or knuckles up and down the bared back of her neck, or that she'd curled her hand into his lap and looking for his touch somewhere around the middle of the first act. He'd equally enjoyed the fact that he could introduce her as his _Girlfriend_ and his _Executive Producer_ at once, same sentence. And he'd especially appreciated the black-lace-on-champagne-sheer of her dress against her pale pink flushed skin and the way she'd curled into his side as he'd looped them close in the serpentine back halls of the theatre afterwards, waiting to introduce her to a modern Broadway titan. He'd been free to hold her close the whole night through, no worry that anyone would see, no second guessing.

“I wish you'd told me you were going to do that,” she fusses at him as they settle into the back of a cab after and he's got to extricate his watch from the lacy and pretty thing she's got on her shoulders and upper arms. The problem with that is that the fabric seems... _delicate_. And that's just not a word his hands are used to lately. “I would have been more prepared. I could have - ”

“No offense but she's already forgotten your name, Mac. Forget about it,” he answers rapidly, shifting to block her movements as he tries to extricate himself. “Hold still, baby.”

“Where to?” the driver asks, his voice just barely pre-empting MacKenzie's as Will finally starts to loosen the tangle and draw his wrist away slowly.

“How do you know her again?” Her tone is more anxious than expected, more prying.

“The Peninsula, please,” he tells the driver, tugging her close once he's finally gotten them untangled and they pull into traffic. Will purposely tucks her tight into his side and doesn't wait for an invitation, he just slides an arm around her, curls her into himself and enjoys the fact she's totally relaxed in leaning closer. She hasn't really publicly rebuffed him lately, not since she's moved in. It's such an alteration to him, she's constantly so free with her affection and so happily leaned into him and there's still a monster in his mental closet, darkly whispering that _this can't actually be real. This can't actually work out_.

Not for _him_.

He doesn't deserve her.

He's not the man she'll end up with, not in the long run, that's what his head tells him.

It doesn't matter that she looks like she loves him. He's just a weigh station, really.

(He's doing his absolutely best not to believe that, he really is... And especially considering she's been living with him for more than a month.

But some of the simplest insecurities can survive the strongest scrutiny and he's learned to lend credence to the worries that hang on so tightly as this one.)

“We did a Point Foundation event together. It was a lot of fun, actually. She's a riot,” he answers gently, slowly, fingers finding a loose lock of hair and brushing it from her cheek.

“Billy? Did you... I mean - ”

“ _No_ , Mac” No, he hadn't slept with the Broadway actress in question. He also hadn't ever planned to do so, not fucking likely. Still, MacKenzie's concern, her self conscious worry, it has her tightened up beside him and not at all as relaxed as he'd like her to be when he's not-so-subtly teasing at the fairly high cut side hem of her dress. “She was... No, _listen_ , MacKenzie, the woman is four feet tall and she's four thousand times more energetic than I am. Do you really think that the two of us are compatible in ways that would - ”

“I _am_ much better suited to you personality-wise,” she assures him with a satisfied whisper, leaning into how rapidly he'd been trying to convince her that she had nothing to worry about. He grins in answer, letting his fingers slip under the lace and sheer so that he can turn his fingertips around her knee with a slowly traced circle. “And physically. Though you _are_ ridiculously tall.”

Will stretches his palm with a slow sigh, grips onto her thigh and groans as she tenses under the touch. “You...”

“Yes?” she grins impishly up at him, all star-specked eyes and delightfully bemused. Fucking Christ, she's a happy and shining woman when she's been wined and dined and entertained and she's being affectionate. The leftover excitement of the theatre has her lofty and still excitable and he laughs as she continues to just smirk at him, her fingertips tripping his lapel.

Will palms her thigh, rubs his fingertips farther upward and feeling her breath slow as she plaintively turns her face angling into his neck. “You look amazing tonight. Have I told you that?”

She nods, sighing her lips nearer his jaw as she tugs onto his jacket lapel and digs in. “I think earlier, yes.”

“Well, can I be direct, then? Now that I've already been diplomatic and gentlemanly?” he asks with a softened voice, watching the city lights watercolor-wash the pale of her skin with varying and shifting colors. Will lifts his hand from where its been rubbing her thigh, rising up her stomach before he finds the underside of her left breast and traces that weighted curve. He angles his body just curved and leaning enough that the driver can't necessarily see what he's doing, even if it is pretty obvious.

He can't tell if she's being devilish, devious, or just herself (which is likely a combination of all and especially when she's so happily pleased).

But she kisses his jaw twice before she ducks her head and his thumb takes a swipe over her nipple in response. She nuzzles against the side of his neck and the throated moan she buries against his collar gives a metaphorical tug at his cock.

His brain goes blank white and useless for a moment as she sucks against skin briefly, licking the spot as her head slowly lifts and her whisper reminds him that they had been having a conversation. “You really have, actually. I'm impressed.”

She's all sass and nerve and bold-brunette-beautiful, an absolute goddamn coquette - he can't even remember whatever the fuck they were talking about.

“You're the sexiest thing I've ever...” he drawls off as he shakes his head, the bright of his eyes glazed and his fingertips rounding the inner curve of her left breast. “Hon, I just wanna put my hands all over you if you'll let me.”

She laughs and her head lifts, letting them trade spaces, “Mouth too, I would hope?”

“God yes,” he chuckles against the side of her neck, angling so that he can palm the weight of her breast and groan against flushed skin at once. “This is the slowest cab ever.”

“It _really_ is,” she laughs into the words and her hand loosens from his lapel and he catches the scent of her perfume as she shifts. She reaches down and grips into his shirt instead, thumb fiddling against a button while she levers them even closer. “It's just a wonderfully plush bed they have at the hotel, isn't it? Promise you'll go down on me, Billy?”

The world could promptly end every time she makes a request like that and he'd die happy.

Because she says it so innocently and gently but it's so fucking salacious that his cock is immediately attentive.

“For fucking days, sweetheart.”

She grins so hard that her eyes crinkle thin and he isn't sure she's ever looked more beautiful, even as she shakes her head in negation. “We're leaving in two.”

She says it like he's silly, like he's a complete idiot and thank Christ she's got the patience to keep him hanging around. But then she kisses him after she's said, strong and sweet and a kiss like she's thanking him for something because her eyes match his as she pulls back a little and they're full of appreciation.

“No,” Will whispers, catching the way she drops her glance to his mouth and then back up, “we're staying forever.”

“New York makes me giddy, always,” she responds quickly, kissing him one and twice and more sharply than expected. The smile she's wearing fills her eyes brighter and rounder and he laughs without explanation. He's beside himself to see her this happy.

Something in MacKenzie McHale has become so star-shined alive and it's damn delightful.

“Hometown hero,” he kisses against her lips, purposely gentling her fervor so that he can stroke his tongue along hers, his hand cradling against the back of her head as he kisses her hard but slowly.

She drops her head back as she exhales a slight whimper of sound, pulling him to press over her in the back seat and aiming his mouth down her throat as her sigh ruffles along his ear. “You remembered."

Of course... He remembers everything about her, memory pristine and untouched.

He's never learned a woman so thoroughly as MacKenzie Morgan McHale and he's pretty damn sure there won't be another one he wants to learn so much about.

He decides that he doesn't need to tell her that aloud so much as show her and the way she arches her hips half off the seat as he strokes his fingertips up her thigh and toward her panties says he knows just enough to get by.

He finds the seam on her panties, pulls at the fabric while he kisses her throat and the way her breath catches hooked in her lungs spurs him on, encourages the way he slips a finger under fabric and into wetness. He lays his mouth against the side of her neck, licks the tang of warm perfume from her skin before brushing a whisper down toward her clavicle. “I'm about to make the next two blocks a slightly voyeuristic adventure so you'd better stop me if that doesn't appeal to you, Mac.”

She just smiles her head closer to his shoulder, dreamily and eyes shut, “I'll fucking kill you if you stop, Will.”

He kisses her just to swallow the long moan she makes as he answers with his fingers instead of wasting words.


	2. Chapter Two

The problem with MacKenzie is that he just always wants to touch her (and taste her and watch her).

Mainly because she's soft and smooth and warm all the goddamn time. She tastes as good as she feels and she feels ten times better than she looks and when they've had a night surrounded by strangers, an evening when he's freely been able to just reach for her whenever? Fuck, he doesn't wanna stop. Even when he's lounging in the expensively upholstered chair beside their hotel bed, only dressed in shirtsleeves and boxers and watching her toss about in her sleep.

He's pulled the chair close already and turned it, the back of his hand resting on the edge of the hotel mattress and knuckles brushing up the bare of her arm. He rolls his wrist, turns his hand so that he can rub the back of her shoulder without having to shift too much. His fingers circle on her skin, pressure digging in and frictioning as he hushes a sound between his teeth. “Shhh, _MacKenzie_.”

She's always so sweet looking when she's sleepy, so tousled and winsome, so... messily ethereal. He's pretty sure that he fell in lust with her right as they met but it was absolute madding love the very first time he watched her wake from mussed sheets, hair all a mess. They'd been laid over in Alabama and she'd still been with Brian. She'd neglected to tell her boyfriend that they'd had to share a room after a missed connecting flight. Also that she'd instantly chosen Will as a night-time room partner rather than one of the two male Associate Producers they'd been traveling with. And, well... Will has always neglected to tell her that he'd woken in the middle of the early morning and found himself watching her sleep a bed away and tossing, turning, pale but beautiful.

Worlds apart, from that hotel room to the one they're in now... _Thank Christ_...

“You're staring, Will,” she accuses quietly, sleep-mumbling and rolling enough that she can swipe the hair back from her face, shunting it back and holding it there while she studies him back in response. She's pulled the tiny tank top from her overnight bag and worn that to bed, that and just a pair of equally slim cream lace panties. Her dress is hanging from the end of the bed and half puddled on the excellently plush carpet and he would happily pay triple the cost of the dry cleaning just to leave it until morning, to leave it as a reminder of bending her over the mattress in just her heels.

He gently fingers the tiny strap of the top she's wearing, tugging it between his thumb and forefinger. Her breasts are a personal favorite (right along with her long legs and fucking luscious ass). He watches her relax onto her side, her palm stretched below her cheek while she lets him run his fingertips down the strap and teasing toward her left nipple. The sigh that emits from her lungs comes as he rubs her nipple gently between his thumb and the side of his forefinger, fabric warm against skin.

“Come get in my lap, Cambridge.” He has no fucking clue where that nickname came from, let alone the gall to have said it and that suggestively too. It catches her attention, though, and obviously. She's very suddenly attentive, eyes bright in the low lamp light.

She moans into the hum-whispered sound of him saying it and he feels her stretch her upper body closer, legs going straighter so that she can lean forward into the way he's palming her breast. “That sounded really very sexy.”

Will shrugs at her, flicks his thumbnail across her nipple and the way it peaks under burgundy cotton, all while trying to seem lazily confident. “So get over here.”

There's a tell-tale smile, a small and crooked one that MacKenzie has utterly mastered, one that he's come to recognize as supremely confident and immensely turned on at once. It does something to the swirled colors in her eyes, makes them brighter and more distinctive and turns the maelstrom into a masterpiece. He takes time to appreciate the beauty of them as he offers his hand to her, tipping his head in a silent invitation rather than demand. Her fingers catch against his as she leans forward and Will palms his other hand against her as she moves, supporting her shifting as she stretches into his lap mostly sideways. Her feet are still pressed to the edge of the mattress, her arches bridged on it and pressing so that she can turn her upper half closer. He takes her close into his lap and has to shift beneath her, has to angle his hips lower in the seat to take some of the pressure off his erection. She makes a prized sound of approval as she curls sidelong against him, his stiffening length rubbed against the back of one thigh.

She lifts her hands to his cheeks affectionately and he shuts his eyes into her closeness, her touch, the heat of her pressed into him. Her arms loop his shoulders at just the right pitch to press her breasts against his chest where she's already got his shirt opened back up and he could melt into the fucking floor as she kisses him. Her left arm rests onto his shoulder, her hand digging into his hair as the other finds its way inside his shirt. She flicks his nipple right around the same time she nips onto his bottom lip and sucks and he's really not sure if he can _ever_ kiss another woman and feel this way.

Not like he feels when she hums off the kiss and teases her fingertips up his cheek, smiling over him as she brushes his hair from his forehead.

“I'd like to hear you say that again.” Her right hand slowly strokes his hair back entirely as she speaks, the other palm curling against the opposite side of his neck and she smiles as she tugs at the tips of blonde. “The Cambridge bit. From the desk, maybe.”

The desk, _the goddamn desk_.

That desk is their Forbidden Fruit, that much he knows. It always is.

There's not many a day that he doesn't imagine laying her back on that desktop and just... _fuck. Fuck. Exactly that._

“The anchor desk? Bet you fuckin' would.” There's a smug quality to his tone but he drops his breath quieter, stalling his lungs while he leans forward to shift her. Both his hands catch her middle and he tugs at one hip while pushing at the other, fingers ribbing the lace of her panties while he leads her straddling over him. “Open your legs for me, Kenz.”

He doesn't necessarily need her help but she's all hands on the proverbial deck when it comes to getting him out of his shorts and hard as hell – not that he wasn't more than halfway there already. His head drops back reflexively as she strokes him, his shoulders tightening as she sighs appreciation and pleasure over him. The pressure of her warm palm around him is gently applied but insistent as she stretches forward.

“Will, please?” she whimpers against his throat, her breath bottled up and stoppered in her throat as her lungs try to catch up to themselves. He's not sure he knows exactly what she's asking for, besides that absolute most obvious, but it doesn't stop him from trying to figure it out.

“What?” he nudges at her and drops his hand between them too, brushing his nose against hers in a tease that he absolutely knows is just gonna wince her closer, draw her tighter into him. She's weak for the little things and that's exactly the sort of little thing that slides a moan off her tongue. “You don't like it when I tease you?”

He says it at the exact same time that he pries her panties aside and slips a finger into wetness, a ruthless smile hijacking his mouth as he listens to her sigh out a moan. If there's one thing he knows he can use to his advantage it's the fact that MacKenzie loves his hands and, more to the point, she's a pretty big fan of him putting his fingers inside her. She shivers a little in answer to his movements and he feels it echo down through her arm, long fingers flexing tighter around his cock.

“No, I do. Very much,” she admits more rapidly than he expects, her voice hurried and assured and direct as she leans closer, strokes the fabric of his shirt with her other hand. He pushes that finger up inside her and a gasp claims her throat and her voice. It takes a moment of him slowly sliding a finger, then two, in and out of her to get her back on track. “I do.”

His thumb finds her clit, circles it with steady pressure while he hooks his knuckles and tugs her closer. “I put you over that desk and I'd lose my fucking mind, Mac.”

“You'd lose your fucking job,” she tells him breathlessly, moaning as she shoves down harder onto his fingers and presses deeper into his lap.

“I think it might be worth it, actually.”

She shakes her head back and forth so carelessly that he's not sure it's in answer to his statement or just because she's starting to lose track of everything but his fingers. “It wouldn't, but - ”

“Shh.” His other hand grasps her hip and drives her down a little, lining his length up toward her shifting after he's pulled his fingers from inside her. “Down, sweetheart. Slowly.”

It doesn't take more than a moment for her to nod and sink down onto his length, her hips shifting so that her pelvis is tipped forward and she can take more of him. She makes a long moaned sound, the bulk of it full with breath and lust as she settles onto him. “ _Billy_.”

“ _Fuck_.” His lungs cough up the next exhalation, throat constricting after. He winds his free arm around her tighter, tugs her down farther as he pushes up deeper into her.

“You're the most addictive... I don't know another woman like you.”

“Every woman is like me, Will,” she whispers roughly against his lips, whimpering when he shoves up and drives his hips harshly up. Will catches her head down as she ducks her face, buries it into the crook of his neck and moans loudly. He feels the reverberation of it on his collarbone just before her teeth graze at him and, fuck, he knows it's coming, he knows her teeth will graze against him just before it happens.

“No, they're really not, honey.” He turns his face into her hair, clutching her head down into his neck as she grips on his arms and whimpers all over again. He doesn't answer so much as just meet the rhythm of her hips as much as possible, seething a breath between teeth and lips as she nips at him with a moan. “Not to me.”

She's got most all the physical control and he finds that he's fine with that, especially as she rolls her hips in a way that just draws him deeper inside her. The arch in her lower back digs her forward and farther down and it's right as she rolls her pelvis that they both make an unexpected sound, hers more a whine against his skin. She's an expert at finding a way to slick him just against her g-spot or at least within the near vicinity and _god-fucking-damn-it._ The way the entirety of her body reacts around him, on him, against him? He could fucking implode as she rides him, brain first. He's enchanted by the shape of her, the long and elegant lines, the way he fits inside her. He always has been and it's no different as she finds a steady rhythm, makes him match it in both speed and fervor.

Her nails and teeth both bite into him at once and he groans in answer, “Shirt off, MacKenzie. Now.”

She gasps back off him and he's already got the bottom hem of her top shoved up her abdomen. She lets him lift it off her, tosses the fabric aside as his hands scrub flat palmed heat up her back, his mouth landing between her breasts. Both her hands slick through his hair, fingernails scraping his scalp and the back of his neck, beneath his collar. Her palms cradle his jaw as he sucks against one of her nipples, using his tongue to press it against the roof of his mouth. The pressure pulls a shiver out of her and she pushes her hands back down, gripping at his shoulders beneath the sweated fabric of a mussed dress shirt.

A strangled noise comes off her as he releases her nipple, one that's more frustrated than he expects and he laughs when she's the one to reach down and tug the lace of her panties aside, making their movements easier. “You could've gotten the knickers off first.”

Will just snorts and jerks her closer, thrusting up into her repetitive movements. “You could've gone to bed naked and avoided the problem all together.”

“Can you come for me soon, Billy?” Her murmur is both suggestive and plaintive at once as she drives down hard, the tone of her hushed voice soft. “Hmm? Like this?”

He catches the pretty loving that's shining in her eyes, glossed over a mix of colors than he's now memorized. She's curled closer and drawn up higher against his chest, riding against him slowly so that she can turn her face into the side of his head. “Absolutely. You?”

“Soon.” She's breathless against him, her movements more stuttered and shakier and he braces his hand on her side, presses flat to hold her as the other hand continues teasing between her legs. A shiver takes hold of her, inside then outward and he does his absolute best to force her into coming. She's so fucking close and he can feel it in the urgency of her lips brushing his. “Kiss me?”

She doesn't always manage to make him kiss her as she comes. She doesn't always beg either.

But he imagines that when she does? When she makes a point to match the moments? When she gets desperate enough to not care what she sounds like?

It's the only way she has to say that she really does love him, as she moans onto his tongue and comes around him and if ' _I love you_ ' were a touch it would be her hand delving into his hair and tugging him closer into kissing. He feels her come hard, the way her whole body ripples on and around him, her usual loudness supplanted by a long moan that gets laid onto his tongue.

Call him crass but feeling Mac come around his cock is the one thing he's pretty sure he's not ever going to forget, even beyond senility.

“Just, _fuck_ , Mac...” he groans as she breaks off for oxygen, arms wrapping around her middle and vicing her still. She starts to shift on him and he just grunts disagreement. “Just...”

“I'm right here,” she hums against his cheek, kissing her way up against his temple because he's got her so tightly wrapped she can't much move otherwise. “I'm not going anywhere.”

She's still got her panties twisted aside in likely cramped fingers and he's got her viced into his chest and it's maybe the most awkward sex they've had in a few days but, hell... She makes him feel like a fucking teenager.

Including the fact that if she starts to shift again, he's going to come near instantly. “I'm trying not to just - ”

“ _Will_.” She sighs her forehead against his and moans, her back and hips arching in a way that drives him deeper and his brain blanks completely, all thoughts just dispelled and dispersed and utterly useless. “Just shut up. It's your turn.”

It's mostly always been impossible for him to deny her anything, most especially when she insistently pushes him toward orgasm in a plush hotel armchair, still wearing lace panties and smelling like his cologne.

And that includes coming for her as she laughs her mouth onto his and moans.


	3. Chapter Three

“But... I thought you started in New York,” she says as a question more than a statement, her orange juice glass stalled half between the table and her mouth.

Will nods, grins at the image of a relaxed MacKenzie stuffing her face in a greasy downtown and vintage inspired diner. She's subtly beautiful amid the bright mash of metallic and nineteen fifties colors at one of his favorite local spots, casual in a tank and jeans and just silver drop earrings that may still give him a heart attack. Her bright accent is in such direct opposition to her deeply Americana surroundings that he can't help but grin to himself and wish he could chance snapping a picture to send back to their co-workers.

In any case... MacKenzie McHale wolfing down a stack of blueberry pancakes in the middle of a garishly decorated diner on Eighth Avenue is not at all an image any of the guys back in DC would believe to be true, not with her shoulders bared and slightly sun pinked. Just a simple black tank top and her hair's up in a pony tail that brushes those beautiful shoulders occasionally. She's been wearing a high cut leather jacket over it and he can see Manhattan in her as she moves. Fuck, she'd be an excellent New Yorker. She'd fit so nicely – and what's more is that she knows it. At least every sway of her hips as she moves down each city sidewalk says she does.

“I did. I left DC for New York when I was working as a prosecutor. After the White House I went back into the legal system.”

He sort of loves her hair up on days when it's warm and the back of her neck gets rosy pink and flushed. He wants to lick that spot just at the base of her neck and kiss after himself. It's one of the spots that makes her shiver. He knows that for sure.

She takes a long and thoughtful swallow of her juice and he's utterly distracted by the valved movement of her throat but as soon as she's got the glass back down her brilliant brain is all worked up once again. “But 9/11 - ”

“I was a legal analyst for Renny Ellis. You remember Lawrence? He had a heart attack a year ago, left a wife and three daughters.”

“I vaguely recognize the name,” she nods, her voice culled quiet as she questions herself thoughtfully, “Atlantis?”

“Yeah, he produced morning news programming for ACN in New York. That morning... he had no idea he was gonna have to put me on air at the desk.”

Her face goes a little wistful and there's a bittersweet smile turning up the corners of her mouth, “I've seen the footage.”

“ _Really_?” He's suddenly righteously self conscious, not that he at all understands why.

Mac shares his bed, makes his coffee most early mornings, idly drops her underwear in his lap when he gets too distracted by work and doesn't pay enough attention to her.

She's seen him _actually_ naked, most every day.

He's flabbergasted by the fact that knowing she's seen his first sitting at an anchor desk has him suddenly nervous and shied quiet and what else did he think? That the footage had been stowed away somewhere and hidden, an antiquity?

She's _his producer_. Of fucking course she's seen the footage.

“I mean, I saw it live too, Will. I'd started at the BBC just a few months before. You were... incomparable.” She looks a little smitten as she says it and something in his gut, low and deep, something goes firelight warm. “At least until Jennings came back from break. Now _he_ made my father cry.”

Of _course_ he had....

“You understand what 'incomparable' means, right?”

Her right shoulder lifts as though she just doesn't care, using her fork and knife to lift one of her untouched pancakes and drop it onto his plate, half covering the rest of his eggs and home fries. “How'd you end up at CNN?”

Will lifts his fork and cuts into it but doesn't eat any. “Two years in and Charlie Skinner - you know Charlie?”

She hums a sound of agreement as she stabs at her fruit, quick and quiet, “I know _of_ him.”

“Two years into me co-anchoring the mid-day and Charlie comes to me _on set_ , says a headhunter's on the way to my office and the only network I should accept a legitimate offer from is CNN because none of the others can find their asshole with a map and two flashlights and he says he may as well include ACN on that list because his own news department is getting fat and lazy.”

He finally takes a bite of the pancake she's given him and chews, watching her take time to consider what she's about to say. And he appreciates that. When it comes to Charlie, anyhow. He'd hate to have to defend one against the other.

“ _Charlie Skinner_ told you to take a job with another news agency?” The disbelief in her voice raises the pitch and her shoulders at once, her head thrown back slightly in surprise. And he can't help but feel proud of his friend. To have surprised Mac into blind pride – that's an accomplishment.

He suddenly wishes he could put the two of them in the same room together, aches for it.

Someday she's just got to meet the older man. It's absolutely imperative.

Because MacKenzie would be smitten by Charlie's sweet drunken charm and Charlie would just simply adore her and her perfect journalistic integrity...

Will smiles, feels how emotional and loving it probably looks and still he doesn't care. Still he just shrugs at her and exhales. “ _Charlie Skinner_ had sent them footage of what he considered my best hits and damn near added a cow and three goats to my dowry.”

“He gave you a gift, Will,” she explains, reverent and softly surprised, or impressed he thinks. He can see appreciation on her face as she lifts one shoulder and shakes her head minutely, the pony tail swinging lightly. “CNN has - ”

“It's got you,” he interrupts and fast, though keeping his voice low with it as she reflexively smirks back at him. “So he did, in a way. The gift part, I mean.”

“I was going to say that it has a larger and more engaged audience.” She digs into the last of the pancakes and he knows she's already slowed down so much that she won't even finish what she's started.

“And I was going to ask if you wanted to make out in a corner of the Guggenheim today.”

Mac is still chewing, swallowing, as she starts to smile in answer, charmed and brushing her lips with her napkin before the fork finds the plate once again. “You're just trying to get me to point out that the building is round?”

“I'm trying to get you to blush right in the middle of my favorite diner in the whole wide world, MacKenzie. What's it gonna take?”

“More than a make-out offer,” is all she answers and waves a blueberry at him before popping it into her mouth, her tone veering toward didactic.

“I could start loudly narrating the exact way that I woke up this morning,” Will revels in answering, feeling his grin cradle his lips as her head comes up and her fork stalls mid-air. “Where my cock was when I opened my eyes was definitely not where I left it when I fell asleep last night. Maybe everyone here would like to hear - ”

“ _Will_.” A loudly hissed sound of annoyance sharply shuts him up and he grins, chewing into his cheek and raising a brow at her as she noisily drops her fork to her plate. “Would you please just shut it?”

He could give in and give up... Or he could _actually_ make her blush. Sure, he fucking _loves_ a challenge.

“You gonna tell me you're in love with me this weekend? Or do I have to keep wondering?”

The blush on her goes entirely pink, from the tops of her cheeks and down her throat and the way he smiles at her deepens the rosy tone of it even as her eyes thin at him. “Do you wanna wear what's left of this orange juice, Billy?”

“So,” he lifts his cup and disregards her tone entirely. “Making out at the museum all morning, an outrageously expensive lunch, and then I take you back to the hotel and we nap.”

Her head lifts and angles slightly, eyes widening out in disbelief as she looks him over. “We _nap_?”

“Right, but when I say 'nap' I actually mean that we have sex on the suite's dining table, share a hot shower and then have coffee on the terrace.”

She doesn't blush again but she does give him a covetous little grin, and mischievous too. Her eyes thin a little as she lets her glance wander over his shoulders and then back up at his mouth.

Will gives her a wink, grins at the way her jaw lifts in answer and then there's a laugh tripping off her tongue and it's delightful.

“I definitely think I can be persuaded,” she says after laughing for him, both amusement and sensuality in her eyes as she gives him a genuinely happy (and sexy) smile. “Can we fit some shopping in there?”

“We can do whatever else you want, hon.” He reaches over his half emptied plate and nabs one of the leftover blueberries. “And there are still corners _inside_ the Guggenheim so don't be so fucking smug.”

The cocky grin she gives him is, to his knowledge, his memory, the most amazing goddamn thing he has ever, _ever_ , seen.


End file.
